I’m very fortunate with my new teaching position that I only teach half the day and spend the rest of my time lesson planning, grading, finding out students’ problems and working on solutions, and setting up class activities. I also have a lot of downtime to write, if I manage my time well.

However, my free time activities are limited by the fact that I don’t have administrative rights to my computer, and I’m stuck using IE 8 (which I had to beg to get; when I started last month it was IE 7).

Here are some of the messages that often flash across websites:

Your browser is no longer supported by Blogger. Some parts of Blogger will not work and you may experience problems. If you are having problems, try Google Chrome. [my browser crashed just trying to copy and paste that error message.]

You are using an old version of Internet Explorer which Gmail no longer supports. Some features may not work correctly. Upgrade to new version.

Your browser does not support all features of Google Docs. If you are having problems, try Google Chrome.

But despite all overwhelming evidence to the contrary, our head IT guy insists there’s nothing wrong with IE (“everyone says there are security issues but they’re all wrong”). He also insists there’s no reason to use Google Docs or Dropbox (which I can’t access from my school computer) or any cloud services instead of flash drives because “What would you do if the internet went down?”

So between the hours of 7 am and 3 pm, I’m out of touch. But don’t worry, 21st century; I’ll see you when I get home.